


The Heart on Your Sleeve

by psyche_girl



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (Mostly) Canon-Compliant, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, But Sansa and Arya do not have sex with each other, Gen, House Stark Family Feels (ASoIaF), I mean yeah there's still Lannicest and Targaryens and everything, No Incest, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Stark Family Reunion(s) (ASoIaF), but hey #Westeros, it’s weird having to tag that, soulmate identifying marks fuck your life over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:54:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26294458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psyche_girl/pseuds/psyche_girl
Summary: Sansa wakes at midnight on her eleventh birthday to findAryawritten across her wrist.In that instant, all her beautiful dreams of knights and princes and songs begin to die.
Relationships: Arya Stark & Sansa Stark, Sansa Stark & Jon Snow & Arya Stark, other canon pairings
Comments: 4
Kudos: 84





	The Heart on Your Sleeve

Sansa wakes at midnight on her eleventh birthday to find _Arya_ written across her wrist.

In that instant, all her beautiful dreams of knights and princes and songs begin to die.

She rolls over in a hurry, curling her arm underneath her, because _Arya can’t see_. She doesn’t know yet if she’ll show anyone else, but Arya can _definitely_ never know. Arya will be _horrible_ if she finds out.

Except when Sansa looks over to check Arya is already sitting up, left wrist clutched tight to her chest and staring, and-

Arya’s wrist says _Sansa_.

Arya looks as white and horrified as Sansa feels, and it is this that tips Sansa over into, finally, crying.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen!”

“Oh, and you think _I’m_ happy about it?” Arya demands.

“I was supposed to marry a Southern Lord! I was supposed to marry a Prince, and now – you ruin _everything_ -” Sansa can feel herself flush angry-red, ugly-red, the kind of ugly only Arya brings out of her, and how, _how_ can her soulmate _possibly_ be the one person in the world who always makes everything _worse_ -

“I didn’t want a Name anyway,” Arya spits.

“Of course _you_ wouldn’t want a Name. _You_ only ever want horrible impossible strange things. You’re the one who wants to turn into a boy! I’m a Lady, I’ve always wanted to be a Lady, I’ve always been _good_ , always, why couldn’t you just be _normal_ -”

“You’re not good, you’re the worst sister _ever_ , you’re a selfish stupid _brat_!” Arya yells back, and throws a comb at her, and Sansa shrieks, and-

“I hate you!”

“I HATE _YOU!_ ”

By the time Lord and Lady Stark thunder into the room, drawn by the screaming, Robb has Sansa by the waist and Jon has Arya by the hair and the two of them are _still_ trying to claw each other’s eyes out. Neither has yet put a ribbon on, the room is in shambles, Sansa’s best dress and three yards of silk have been ruined, Arya’s hands and wrists are scratched bloody and Sansa has a bite on her face, and a wobbly candle is threatening to set the whole castle on fire.

“- _and_ stupid, no one even _likes_ you-”

“Father,” Robb gasps, over Arya’s string of invective. “Can you get the door?”

“-conniving lying bitch! Tell her, Jon-”

“Get the _candle_!” Jon urges, just as it tips over onto Arya’s pillow.

Lord Stark goes for the candle. Lady Stark, taking in both girls’ echoing shrieks, bared wrists, the three guards who got there before her, and the watching maids, thinks that while it was good of Robb to hope, it is probably several minutes too late to save her daughters’ privacy. Everyone in Winterfell will likely know of their Names by morning. She closes the door regardless, in the hope of saving some of her daughters’ dignity.

Although that is, quite likely, lost as well.

Arya, red-faced, is still bellowing curses at the top of her breath, including several words she could only have learned from Theon or the bastard. Sansa is red too, as red as her hair, and crying too hard to get a full sentence out, but the words she _does_ manage to choke around tears are, if possible, worse.

“I’d rather have anyone in the world for a soulmate but you,” Sansa chokes, and the worst part is Cat can tell she means it.

“Me too,” snaps Arya, and no, the worst part is that _she_ means it too.

“The girls’ Names will not stay secret,” Ned sighs, many exhausting hours later, after both Sansa and Arya have been put back to bed (in separate beds, in separate brothers’ rooms, in tears).

“Perhaps this is a good thing,” Cat muses. “They won’t have the kind of husbands we hoped for, but having a sister known to be one’s soulmate can be a valuable thing, when Names do not match in a marriage.”

Ned is silent. It is a point of contention, always unspoken between them, that Lady Catelyn has never seen her husband’s wrist bare. She does not know if anyone has ever seen it.

On her bad days, the thought that Jon Snow’s mother’s Name is on her husband’s wrist keeps Cat awake at night.

On her worst days, she has dreams of setting all his bracers and sleeve-ties on fire.

All things considered, Catelyn muses, her children have been lucky in their Names so far. Bran’s soulmate, of course, is entirely suitable, and Robb’s _Jeyne_ is common, yes, but not _too_ common – there are many ladies named Jeyne, even if none from Great or Northern Houses. And now the girls may be matched to any Great Lord who bears the Name of someone unsuitable, like a man or a commoner.

Mayhaps, if Prince Joffrey does not wed his soulmate, one may even wed a future King. 

Absently, Cat turns over possibilities. She’s heard nothing about the Royal children’s soulmarks yet, nor Lysa’s baby boy, but Renly Baratheon is widely known to have a male soulmate – Loras Tyrell, in fact, who might serve if Renly does not. Stannis Baratheon, Domeric Bolton, and Tyrion Lannister are all rumored to bear commoner’s Names, but given that one is betrothed already, one is a Bolton, and one is an Imp...

She will have to keep a close ear on the rumors.

“I am glad for them,” says Ned eventually – hesitantly, and she can see that he has taken her words of unmatched Names for condemnation. “I am glad they have each other. They will always have each other, Gods willing. I fear for them, that they seem so very set against this.”

“They are young,” Cat reassures, squeezing her husband’s hand in silent apology. “They are young, and girls fight. These Names are a blessing and in time our girls will grow to see that.”

They do grow to see it, eventually.

But it takes an awful lot of growing and an awful lot of time.

And, in the meantime, a lot of very, very awful things happen.

Jeyne Poole has _Theon_ written on her wrist. Theon Greyjoy has _Robb_ on his wrist. And Robb Stark has _Jeyne_.

The only person in Winterfell who has seen all three of these Names is Lady Catelyn, who has very traditional notions about Names and a vested interest in her son eventually producing children with someone other than a steward’s daughter. She never tells anyone.

Jeyne (of course) shows her wrist in secrecy to Sansa, and the two of them spend countless teenage hours haunting Theon’s shadow. Robb confides his Name to Theon and Jon Snow. Possibly as a result of this, Theon does _not_ show his wrist to Robb, and spends countless teenage hours haunting Robb’s shadow, snapping jealously at Jon Snow, and lingering in Winterfell’s brothels.

(Robb does wonder, for maybe a day or two after his Name comes in, if the _Jeyne_ on his wrist might belong to Jeyne Poole – but _Jeyne_ is such a common name, and Jeyne Poole never giggles or blushes at him the way she does at Theon even though she’s been in ribbons for months now, and it’s not as if _Robb_ is a common name – his mother invented it, for the Gods’ sakes. Robb reckons that when he meets his _Jeyne_ , she will likely know, and tell him.)

(When he meets Jeyne Westerling, many years later, she does.)

Lady Catelyn also never tells anyone that she invented the name _Robb_ precisely so it would be uncommon – that she chose each of her children’s names for this reason. Lady Catelyn remembers growing up with _Stark_ on her wrist, remembers meeting three Stark brothers and loving the eldest and losing the eldest and loving the second, never knowing what either wrist held, and she is determined that none of her children will ever need to doubt their soulmates.

None of them do. Her children feel many other things about their soulmates – rage and pride and guilt and hate and sorrow, betrayal and lust and joy and affection and pain and fear – but not a single Stark child ever doubts who his or her Name belongs to.

(It might, perhaps, have been better if some of them did.)

It is vanishingly rare for a Name to appear before one’s seventh birthday, or after their eleventh. Young Lord Bran is one of the rare ones. He has been betrothed from the cradle to Lord Howland’s daughter, Meera, as he was born with _Reed_ on his wrist.

Even more unusually, _both_ Reed children are born with Bran’s Name – Jojen with _Brandon_ , and Meera with _Stark_.

There is a betting pool going around Winterfell, about little Lord Rickon’s wrist and whether he will hold a commoner’s or a noble lady’s or a wildling’s Name.

(No one ever collects on it. Little Lord Rickon dies before his wrist ever says anything at all.)

Jon Snow doesn’t have a Name.

It’s not proper to gossip about Names, and not at all proper to reveal one’s Name to anyone (except a Septon, when you marry, or the person whose Name you bear) but news about some Names always seems to get out anyway. Some are whispered over – like the head cook, for instance, whose accidental sleeve-tear sparked a decades-long argument about whether the serving maids spied _Maena_ or _Marya_ writ there – and some are known as fact – like the King, who famously rode to battle Prince Rhaegar with _Stark_ writ bare on his wrist. Jon is one of the known ones.

And everyone knows Jon Snow doesn’t have a Name.

Everyone gets their Name at a different age, of course, but if it’s rare for infants to have names it is rare beyond the telling for a Name to appear after twelve or so. You must have a Name before you are a man, the saying goes. And Sansa remembers Jon going about with loose sleeves at fifteen, at sixteen, at seventeen, wearing none of the ties or wrappings or leather bracers common among Northmen. Jon was nearly eighteen before he began tying his sleeves shut, and even then he forgot half the time, and by then everybody in Winterfell knew – Jon Snow doesn’t have a Name.

The Faith of the Seven claims that lacking a soulmate means lacking a soul, and Septa Mordane has given many lectures on how Jon’s lack of soul is a clear sign of bastardy and wickedness and the Gods’ disfavor. She has never fully explained whether the bastardy causes the wickedness causes the soullessness causes the lack of Name or vice-versa, possibly because Arya usually interrupts at that point with a screaming fit or an insult or (once, memorably) a cold fire-poker to the face.

From the instant Sansa lays eyes on Prince Joffrey, she hopes for nothing so much as that he might have an unsuitable Name.

She feels guilty for it. It’s _horrible_ , she knows, to hope someone can’t marry their soulmate, and worse to hope they don’t have a soulmate at all. Maybe Joffrey’s soulmate could be Myrcella or Tommen, like hers is Arya? She thinks she likes that option best. She knows it’s likely impossible, she knows sibling-soulmates are nearly as rare as Names on infants, but it would still help her feel less…less _unusual_ to know of somebody besides dead Targaryens who had a sister for their Name.

But still, Sansa hopes. And when she goes to light a candle in the Sept and to the Godswood, she cannot stop herself from praying with all her heart that Prince Joffrey’s wrist is either common-marked, or blank.

“So. Your sister is to marry the Prince, and you travel with her, eh? I suppose your father wants you married off too.”

Arya blinks up.

Wow, the Kingslayer sure is tall.

“I don’t want to get married. I want to _fight_ ,” she corrects him, blinking at the dazzle of white armor. “Can I see your sword?”

“I hear your sister is your soulmate.”

Arya scowls. “All _Sansa_ wants is to be a Queen and a Lady and marry the _stupid_ Prince.” Belatedly, she remembers the Kingslayer is the Prince’s uncle. “I mean. Um.”

Somewhat to her surprise, the Kingslayer bursts out laughing.

“Well he _is_ stupid! He’s stupid, and mean, and not half as good with a sword as Jon and you’re his uncle and his guard so you should know that. I bet I could fight him. If he tries anything with Sansa, I’ll beat him bloody.”

“You _are_ a sharp-toothed little bitch, aren’t you?” The Kingslayer’s eyes go sad, and faraway. “The Capitol isn’t kind to wild girls, wolfling. You’d best learn to keep your mouth shut and listen to your clever sister, unless you want those fangs pulled from your pretty little head.”

There are about six things in that speech that make Arya want to hit him, not least that he called her _pretty_. Before she can say anything, her hair is getting painfully caught in a big mailed hand as he ruffles it.

The he walks off.

“Hey. Hey! _Hey_ , come back, you-”

Arya runs, but the Kingslayer is _tall_ , with long legs, and he reaches the Great Hall before she does – and the Great Hall has Mother, who promptly gets Arya in trouble for running, and for messy hair, and for calling guests and members of the Royal Family names.

The next time she sees the Kingslayer, Arya resolves, she’s going to kick him in the shins.

“What do you think of the Stark girls?” Cersei asks.

Half the realm has heard the rumors about the Stark girls: one is famously beautiful, and one is famously ugly, and they most famously of all have each other’s Names. An interesting gamble, advertising that last fact. Possibly the only genuinely successful political move the Starks have made in the last decade. 

“I met the little one,” Jaime answers. “It was like talking to an especially stupid version of my nine-year-old self.”

“Hmm,” drawls Cersei, in the voice that means she’s pleased.

Well, maybe this whole trip North won’t be a total loss, if Cersei’s finally found a prospective daughter-in-law that she approves of. Jaime can’t fault her choice, either, even if part of him feels a little sorry for the Starklings. The older Stark girl is clearly well-bred, well-behaved, pretty, and ambitious, and as much as Jaime might sympathize with her tiny savage soulmate…

Two _sisters_ will never have bastards.

Speaking of which, there’s the other point in favor of this journey: the exciting abundance of empty rooms. Winterfell may be ugly and freezing and mostly-derelict, with shit defenses and uncomfortable beds, but it’s also got barely a quarter the population of the Red Keep. After the Hunt leaves, there won’t be more than thirty people left, including the children.

Yes. Jaime is confident that today, at last, he and his soulmate can finally steal some time undisturbed.

It’s going to be an excellent day.

It is not, in fact, an excellent day.

For anybody, but especially for Bran Stark.

Sansa does not remember when she learned why her mother hates Jon. She knows exactly when (and why) _she_ started to hate Jon, but she doesn’t remember ever actually learning what the word _bastard_ means.

She does remember, very vividly, one dusty day in the Maester’s tower when she learned why her mother _fears_ Jon.

Until the Dance of the Dragons it was legal for bastards to inherit over trueborn, so long as their parents’ bore each others’ Names. In Dorne, it still is. And Jon Snow was brought home from the wars by her father, wars that carried him into Dorne for the sake of his sister.

Sansa grew up smearing grubby fingers all over the _Stark_ on her mother’s wrist every bathtime, but she has never seen her father bare-armed.

On the road, Sansa rides with the Queen every day in her carriage. It takes only three hours shared company before not only Arya, but three of the Queen's Royal handmaids, are all insisting Arya be given a horse.

“Girls can’t be kingsguards," the Kingslayer says, almost apologetically, as his steed gallops past Arya’s pony. "But they might be ladies in waiting.”

“I’m not a lady," Arya spits, and turns her pony to the back of the column, where the attendants and commonborn and other unwanted ride.

“I hear you have your sister’s Name on your wrist.”

Queen Cersei smiles at Sansa. Queen Cersei seems to _approve_ of Sansa, impossibly, incredibly, and Sansa feels dizzy with her good luck.

If Arya or Arya’s-stupid-Name or Arya’s bickering somehow _ruin_ this luck, Sansa resolves that she will _never speak to her sister again._

“I do, my Queen,” she ventures timidly, and prays the unladylike viciousness doesn’t show on her face. “But she’s not- it’s not- I want to marry the _Prince_ , your Grace, I want to marry Joffrey and have his babies and be Queen, it’s all I _ever_ wanted, I- Arya isn’t-”

She bends her head, ashamed of losing her perfect-Lady smile. To her surprise, she feels a warm hand settle lightly on her hair.

“Don’t fret, little dove,” the Queen coos, softly, with a perfect-Lady smile as gorgeous as the gold-and-ruby bracelet pressing cool against Sansa’s neck. “I think you - and your soulmate - will fit very well into our family indeed.”

And then there is a riverbank, and an argument, and Arya’s sword ( _Jon’s_ sword, the back of Sansa’s mind hisses, Jon the bastard, Jon must have given Arya that sword, Arya always _did_ love Jon best) and Arya’s wolf tears away Joffrey’s velvet-and-ruby bracelet, and suddenly everything _is_ ruined, after all.

“You won’t tell _anyone_ ,” Joffrey snarls at Sansa, shaking and bleeding in the wake of Arya’s wolf.

“Of course not!”

The Seven say people without Names don’t have souls, but no matter what Sansa might scream at Arya during their arguments she has never quite believed it. Jon Snow is a boring moody lump of a boy and a bastard besides, but it’s plain enough he’s a _person_.

“I don’t mind at all if your wrist is blank,” Sansa hurries to reassure her golden Prince. “I’m happy, my Prince, because I love you so, and this means you can love me too when we’re married.”

“It’s not for _you_ to mind or not!” Joffrey snaps, drawing himself and his ripped sleeve-ties up tight. “M- Mother says I don’t have the weakness of a Name because I don’t _need_ anyone to complete me. I’m not weak and stupid like everybody else, I’m a Prince, and I don’t need anyone’s love or anyone’s approval!”

That doesn’t sound quite right to Sansa. She has never felt as if Arya’s name on her wrist was a weakness. She has certainly never felt like she was _incomplete_ without Arya. But then, she considers somewhat guiltily, she _has_ thought before that Arya brought out all the worst parts of her.

Perhaps Joffrey isn’t entirely wrong?

Of course he’s not wrong. He’s the Crown Prince.

Sansa nods, and smiles, and tries not to mind that Joffrey grabs her arm too tight when he moves to pull her back to the camp. He’s a boy, and a warrior, of course he doesn’t know his own strength. She’s sure he can’t really mean to bruise her.

He’s gripping her, she notices, right over her Name-ribbon. Sansa feels quietly proud, that her future King and husband trusts her with his secrets.

Sansa clings to her pride – tells herself over and over about that pride, about Joffrey’s _trust_ , and presses cold small fingers into the bruises to block out Arya’s Name – as she cries herself to sleep that night in a bed without Lady.

A red comet streaks across the sky.

A red comet streaks across the sky, and three eggs hatch, and Daenerys Targaryen wakes in fire, with her hair loose and her clothes ash and _Drogon_ writ blood-red on unburnt skin.

Some hundred-odd miles north of the Wall, _Viserion_ blooms unnoticed on Jon Snow’s arm.

And a young man in Astapor wakes, scratches his blue hair, and blinks in confusion at _Rhaegal_ suddenly stamped red like a scar on his wrist.

Margery tells Sansa that she is to be married to Loras. Loras Tyrell, the Knight of Flowers. It is almost as lovely a thought as the idea of leaving King’s Landing.

“Oh,” Sansa breathes. “I – but what about his Name?”

“My brother has Lord Renly’s Name,” Margery says. There is something careful in her eyes, as she watches Sansa. “But of course, they were both men, and two men – or two women – could never wed as soulmates.”

“Oh! Like Bran!” Sansa shrinks back a bit, at Margery’s questioning eyebrow, but – Margery is her friend. Margery is Joffrey’s soulmate, yes, but somehow Margery is _still_ her friend, the only kind Lady Sansa has met in the South. Margery has _trusted_ Sansa, with news of a betrothal that could be treason if it were known. And surely it cannot be too dangerous to speak of her family if she’s only saying what everybody knows?

“My brother Bran was betrothed to Lord Reed’s daughter Meera from the cradle, for he was born with _Reed_ on his wrist, and Meera and her brother both bear Bran’s Name. He was meant to foster at Greywater, before…before…”

Margery is kind, and does not draw attention to Sansa’s sudden choked silence, nor the memories that must surely be welling up, too-obvious on Sansa’s stupid open face: _fallen, crippled, betrayed by Theon, **dead**_.

“I did not know there were other siblings who shared a soulmate,” Margery murmurs instead, eyes distant. She keeps a warm hand on Sansa’s arm as Sansa pulls herself together. 

It is only later, musing over their conversation, that Sansa realizes what Margery said.

The whole court knows Margery has _Baratheon_ on her wrist – and Margery’s brother has _Renly_. Just like Jojen Reed’s wrist says _Brandon_ , and Meera’s _Stark_.

Margery’s soulmate is not Joffrey after all. Margery’s soulmate has always been Renly.

And Margery _told her_.

Sansa clutches treason close between her heart and wrist, in the dark of the Red Keep, and smiles, and feels a little less afraid.

Perhaps she can trust Margery, a little, after all.

Tywin Lannister calls Sansa the _Key to the North_. He tells her she is to marry Tyrion. But it is only when she hears him call her the last Stark that she has to fight to control her expression.

Everyone knows that Names do not fade until lives do.

 _Arya_ says her wrist, Arya Stark, Arya the brave, Arya who escaped and whose Name is still dark and present and beautiful and _alive_ , somewhere.

Sansa is not the last Stark living.

She can get through anything, so long as that is true.

"I know you must be frightened," smiles Lord Baelish. "But I swear I am your friend, Sansa. I loved your mother.” He flexes one braceleted wrist in a way that leaves little to the imagination, and Sansa feels her eyes go wide and her cheeks go hot in surprise. "I would help you for her sake. We were very nearly family, you and I."

Sansa swallows, thickly. With effort, she makes herself let go of her own wrist under the dark of the table.

Arya would be brave. Arya would trust family, above all. Arya would - Arya _did_ \- escape, when Sansa couldn't.

Sansa decides to trust Lord Baelish.

(Arya has always, always brought out all the worst parts of Sansa)

Ramsay cuts off Sansa’s soulmark.

He does far worse than that, of course – he cuts her skin off in pieces, burns her with a poker, forces her to watch as he twists up Theon-not-Reek and then forces Reek upon her-

Ramsay hurts her. But he does not break her, because she is Sansa Stark and she is in Winterfell and she will survive. Sansa is held down in the dark, with a man over her and a knife ripping into her wrist, and she remains silent. She does not weep.

Not until-

Ramsay whispers all the ways Arya could die in her ear, every night, thrusting into her.

“She could have died of a fever. They could have found her and cut her up. She could have been raped – like I’m doing to you, sweet wife – and then her throat slit when she didn’t bear enough whelps- and you’ll never know-”

Sansa may very well be the last Stark living. Sansa _Snow_ has no Name, not anymore.

Ramsay grins, wild and triumphant, and lifts a knife over Sansa in the darkness.

Sansa breaks.

In Winterfell, Theon-or-Reek watches Sansa as if waiting for her to snap at him. To hurt him, or hate him.

Another Sansa, long ago, might have. There is evil lurking down in the worst parts of Sansa, envy and hate, a vicious wolf-fanged wild desire for vengeance against all those who hurt her. She used to dream about what she would do to Joffrey and Cersei if she only could. And when she was a child she was always so awful to Jon Snow and Ary-

Well.

These days, there are no worst parts of Sansa. There are not many parts of _Sansa_ left, it feels like, anymore.

When Theon-mayhaps-Reek suggests they jump, Sansa looks at the drop and her death and her empty wrist and thinks _what do I have left to live for?_

“I was horrid to you, admit it.”

Instead of admitting it, Jon Snow leans in to put a hand on Sansa’s arm – right over her bound wrist.

“Arya never really hated you. You know that don’t you?”

He’s so earnest. And such a terrible, terrible liar.

“She did, though. You both did, or should have. I don’t blame you. She was _right_ to hate me, she was right about how I treated you both, Jon, I was so _awful_ to you, I was-”

This is appalling. Sansa should be _better_ than this by now. Tears are _weapons_ , to be used judiciously to hurt and flatter and lie, it's a ridiculous waste to be crying now with only Jon to impress, it's useless and _stupid_ and far too honest and Arya has always, always, _always_ brought out the _worst_ in her-

Jon looks alarmed by her tears.

“Arya’s not still alive? She’s not- is her- your, I mean-” He takes a shaky breath, and visibly pushes past his embarrassment to reach out and touch her once, gently, over her wrapped sleeve. “Is _it_ still dark?”

Sansa has known since her eleventh nameday that Arya didn’t want to be her soulmate. She has known since the morning after her nameday, when she came to apologize and was glared away by matching Stark eyes, Arya’s and Jon’s matching grubby dark Stark heads curled together in a corner of the training yard, _exactly_ who Arya always wanted for a soulmate instead.

There is a reason Sansa was the only one of Catelyn’s children who ever hated Jon Snow.

And Jon Snow – good kind honorable Jon, Jon the perfect brother, Jon who even after _years_ of scorn always tried to be kind even to Sansa, who is still trying – Jon Snow doesn’t have a Name.

Even now, good kind Jon is worried for Arya, when all selfish stupid Sansa can worry for is herself.

There is a reason she always hated him. Why she always hated Arya.

Arya always did bring out the worst in her.

Humiliatingly, Sansa cannot get enough breath to tell him. So, fingers shaking, she pushes Jon’s hand away to rip the rag off her wrist instead.

From the corner of her eye she sees Jon flinch back in horror.

Sansa expected this reaction, but somehow she _still_ has the capacity to feel hurt by it, by the confirmation that no one good and kind will ever look on her bare skin without disgust. Sansa is as damaged on the outside as she as inside, now: all her weakness and soullessness and ugliness on display.

Names, once ruined, do not grow back.

Slowly, lightly, Sansa feels fingers touch her wrist. Touch her- her _scar_.

She looks up, shocked, into Jon Snow’s face. Jon is- oh.

 _Oh_.

Jon is wearing _their father’s_ expression. The same sorrow Sansa remembers from every dark-winged letter in King’s Landing, spread across this near-stranger’s nose and chin.

“I’m going to kill him,” Jon growls – a low growl, a wolf-growl, and Sansa feels their shared blood beat hard and fast inside her with something other than fear for the first time in a long time.

It occurs to her all a sudden that Jon Snow may be the only person in all the world who can even begin to understand the pain that scar gives her. Jon Snow who doesn’t have a Name, and always wanted one. Jon Snow who Arya loved.

Sansa flinches when Jon lets go – and then flinches harder when he shifts forward, wafting a smell of warm filthy wool, and starts to unwrap his own bracer.

“Jon. _Jon_ , what by the Mother are you…?”

For a long minute, Sansa can’t bring her eyes to register what she’s seeing, because _that’s_ _impossible_. Jon Snow _doesn’t have a Name_ , everyone _knows_ he doesn’t, and even if he did, that is- that-

Sansa has never in her life seen anything like that. It’s not black, like a normal soulmark. It’s in a foreign language, and foreign-looking, and red and dark as blood.

“It’s not a scar. I don’t know when it showed up.” Jon gives a laugh that sounds more like a croak. His eyes are fixed away from her again, face gone closed and fixed and un-Fatherish. “I’ve no idea who- I don’t know _what_ the word means. If it’s a Name. But it didn’t vanish when I died.”

It wouldn’t. Soulmarks only ever fade from the wrists of the living.

“Jon. Jon, it’s _red_.”

Sansa can’t help herself from saying idiot obvious things, apparently. Sandor was right when he called her a stupid little bird.

But her stupidity must help, somehow, because Jon’s laugh this time sounds less like a crow’s bark.

“Yeah. Um. I’d sort of noticed?”

Today is a day of impossibilities. Jon Snow does not hate her. Jon saw her scar. Jon is alive, is _family_ , looks like father and loves Arya and _hugged her_. Jon _touched her wrist_. Jon has been raised from the dead, and Sansa’s feet are (finally) warm, and the Others are coming and Jon Snow has a _soulmate_.

Jon Snow has a foreign soulmate, writ long after adulthood in clearly-magic blood-red, and he might not hate Sansa, but it is a long way from hate to love to family.

Cold leaks up Sansa’s left arm, around the open sleeve on her scarred-blank wrist.

Jon Snow has a Name for the first time in their lives – and Sansa does not. 

“It’s foreign.” So foreign she cannot even tell if it is a man’s or a woman’s Name. Sansa’s words sound distant to her own ears, as if spoken from a long way away. “You’ll have to find them. Where will you go?”

It is a struggle to make her voice work.

“Where will _we_ go?” Jon corrects her.

For the first time in a long time, Sansa is part of a _we_.

Her chest hurts, and her face hurts, and it takes her a long minute to realize she is smiling.

Before the battle, Sansa insists on tying on Jon’s armor herself.

She does not give him a favor. Sansa does not believe in favors the same way she did as a child. Courtesies and silks have power, yes, but only as much power as lies do: as much power as she can bring to light belief in mens’ eyes. She would have (will) give a favor to Petyr, later, one she spent weeks sewing, and mayhaps a kiss with it. But courtesies and silks are not the tricks she needs with Jon.

The trick with Jon is harder. With Jon, she needs the truth.

Sansa yanks tight the last buckle, and grabs Jon’s wrist to steady herself – grabs his wrist so her scars slide against his bracer, metal over bandages over ruined, burned-up flesh. A mockery of a wedding pose.

She looks him right in their shared Stark eyes.

“For Arya.”

Jon nods.

“For Arya.”

After, Sansa watches as Jon rides out to battle, and knows she has been trapped in her own lie: she herself half-believes they will win.

It does not make Rickon’s death any easier to witness. But then, nothing ever could.

(Rickon Stark never has a soulmate. He dies at eleven, before his wrist reads anything at all.)

“There are Starks in Winterfell again,” Sansa tells Jon, joyous.

“There is _a_ Stark in Winterfell,” he says, and bows his head to her, stepping away.

Sansa has known Jon was going to leave since long before the ravens came. It may have been Petyr Baelish’s pointed whispers and the urgent need to save Jon’s life from Petry Baelish’s whispers that made her shove him (very politely) out the door to go hunting dragonglass, but Sansa has known from the day they won back Winterfell that Jon was going to leave. Jon is family now – Jon is the best impossible thing that has ever happened to Sansa – and Jon is her friend and her ally and her King, but Jon _Snow_ is not a Stark. Not quite.

Jon Snow has a foreign blood-red soulmark, in a language and with a name that has never been heard in Westeros.

Sansa Stark has nothing but scars left on her wrists. Sansa has no soulmark, and no soulmate, not anymore.

Bran comes back.

Bran comes back, and now there are _two_ Starks in Winterfell.

Jon Snow is away in the South (is not a Stark, not a Stark, _not a Stark_ ). Jon _Snow_ has a foreign blood-red soulmark, and Bran Stark’s wrist reads _Reed_. Bran spends all his time with trees now, trees and Meera, and Sansa cannot bear to be too long in a room with Meera, this strange lost half of a pair of siblings, a pair of soulmarks. Sansa looks at Meera and thinks _Margery_ , looks at Meera and thinks _Loras, Cersei, Jaime_ , looks at Meera and thinks _Ary_ -

Sansa avoids being where Bran Stark is.

But she wishes- she wishes-

Family should not mean feeling so _alone_.

Arya and Sansa’s reunion looks like this:

“Prove you’re her,” the thing-that-is-possibly-her-sister snarls, sharp knife dug into Sansa’s neck and sharp eyes pinning her to the wall. “ _You_ can't be Sansa. Sansa hated our brother.”

What Sansa wants to say is: I was nothing but a stupid little girl back then. Just like you were. And we hurt each other and you hated me and I hated you and I hated Jon because you loved him more than you ever loved me, but I don’t anymore, I _understand_ now, you were lost and I missed you and I love you and I love him and I’m so _proud_ of you, I’m so glad, can’t we be family-

What she actually says is: “Jon is our _half_ -brother, Arya, and if you’re threatening me _must_ you use the good dinner knives?”

Arya has always, always, _always_ brought out all the worst parts of Sansa.

The butter knife wobbles, then falls.

“… _Arya_ ,” Sansa breathes, and cuts her own hand clutching at the blade, at the retreating hand, trying to grab for Arya’s wrist.

She should probably be worried about the blood smeared worryingly close to her sister’s mouth, about the sting of the knife on her own itching scars, about the bag of skinned faces and the dark magic that just stripped the face right off a stranger to reveal her sister and where Arya might have _been_ all these years, but she can’t seem to feel anything but _glad_.

Sansa always knew her sister would grow up deadly.

“Dinner knives are blunt, stupid,” Arya scowls, whacking a bruise into Sansa's side with the knife-hilt. “And if you weren’t really Sansa I was going to kill you slow.”

Sansa turns Arya’s caught wrist over – crying again, she _should not_ be crying, tears are _weapons_ but she is so weak and Arya _always_ brings out the _worst_ in her – and grips, hard, bruising, nails digging into the matching scar her sister now wears in place of matching Names.

“Who else could I be but your sister?”

Arya's hand turns over under Sansa's, and tightens, convulsively, on her wrist.

“I’m not the only person with more than one Face. They played games with me, after they cut my mark off. They wanted to make me forget.”

Arya’s voice is as flat as a threat.

But this new Arya doesn’t talk with her voice: she talks with her knife and her fast small deadly hands, all edges, and one of Arya’s hands is clutching tight at Sansa’s neck where her pulse sits and the other is still digging in, dripping warm blood and sharp small ragged nails into Sansa’s newly bloody scar. It hurts worse than anything has hurt Sansa in a long time.

Sansa really, really should be worried about this: about games, about faces, about the pain. Instead, she is worried about Arya’s insufficiently warm clothing, about the thin hungry bones of her. Arya’s sleeves are frayed, where her arm pins Sansa to the wall. Sansa longs to darn them.

“Ramsay burned my Name off,” she explains. “Jon fought him, Jon fought for-”

Not "for you." Not "for me," either, but-

“-for _us_ , Jon defeated him in battle, and then I had Ramsay eaten by his own hounds. He died slow.”

The ghost of a wolf-grin flickers, wavering, at the corner of Arya’s eyes.

“I killed the Freys. And the Waif, because she wore yours and Jon’s and mother’s faces. I didn’t forget them, I'm not No One, and you’re not a trick. You’re _not_. I remembered, and I killed all the ones I could. I made a list. The Waif and the Freys and Meryn Trant and Ilyn Payne, Tywin Lannister, Joffrey, the Mountain, the Red Woman. Cersei. The Hound.”

This sounds like an unAryaishly sensible list to Sansa, although she does wonder what the Hound did to get himself put on it.

“And Petyr,” Sansa adds, for completion's sake. “He betrayed Father. He told me…” she hesitates. Looks at Arya’s eyes. Stark eyes, grey eyes, so unlike hers. Feels Arya’s pulse in her fingers, Stark blood over Stark blood beneath matching ruined wrists.

 _Oh_.

“Want to kill him together?” Sansa asks, and watches Arya’s Stark eyes light up from the inside.

Sansa and Arya _have_ always brought out all the worst parts of each other.

They are soulmates, after all.

They talk about it later, after supper and Arya's public return, while Sansa indulges herself by fitting Arya for proper clothing and Arya indulges herself by making horrible muddy messes of all Sansa’s best fabric and throwing something at her every once in a while for old times' sake.

“I met Tywin Lannister once. He liked me. The Kingslayer didn’t like me, but he followed me around a lot.”

“He and Cersei were fucking,” Sansa tells her. Arya blinks gravely back, as if to say _yes and?_ Sansa rolls her eyes, and jabs Arya in the side, in the meat below the last rib where Arya has shown her it will hurt worst. Arya grins approval. “Cersei talked a lot to me about soulmates.”

Arya scowls.

“Cersei killed Father.”

“ _Petyr_ killed Father, Petyr and Joffrey and Father’s stupid honor.” Sansa huffs a sigh. “Honor makes men very hard to protect.”

Arya’s hard grey eyes soften, just a little.

“We’ll keep Jon safe.”

“He’s got a foreign soulmate now. Viserion. I sent him off to Dragonstone.”

“Names are important, but they’re not everything. He’ll come back.”

Arya loved Jon without any marks between them, Sansa reminds herself. Arya wanted to be Jon's soulmate even back when Jon's wrist was blank, Arya knows Jon best. You can _trust_ Arya.

It is still very hard for her to believe.

“All Jon ever wanted was a Name,” Sansa reminds Arya, unable to keep her eyes from fixing back on the ruin of her wrist. “ _Our_ name.”

“Hm,” says Arya, in the tone of voice that means _I know how to kill it now_ , and Sansa looks up fast to find Arya’s gaze fixed on her ruined wrist, too.

“What?”

Arya grins, slow and bloody, and waves the dinner knife.

“Got any knives sharper than this?”

Most of Sansa’s experience with knives has been unpleasant. _Deeply_ unpleasant. But she kept Ramsay’s knives after she killed him, because she is Northern and practical and a knife is a knife.

Arya takes one look at Ramsay’s knives and scoffs.

“ _I_ don’t want to hurt you, stupid. Get something sharper.”

Arya knows knives, and likes them – and Sansa trusts Arya.

“All right,” Sansa agrees, and goes.

Arya uses knives, and likes them. Sansa uses needles, and her best fabric dye. They sit together long into the nights, and go through many candles planning.

They are ready by the time Jon comes home.

Once upon a time, Sansa was held down in the dark, with a man over her and a knife ripping into her wrist, and she taught herself how to stay silent. How not to scream. Sansa does not flinch anymore, not from knives and not from men.

Sansa _will not_ flinch.

“I can leave,” Jon offers, because he knows Sansa well enough by now to recognize the white around her eyes, and to understand this would be easier for her without a man in the room.

She stares at the fragile, desperate, battered hope that keeps breaking through Jon’s hesitation, and thinks of what she’d like to say. Thinks of telling him, _you’re the first person I ever chose to be my family_ , and _I think you’re more Stark than any of us_ , and _I want always to call you my King_.

“You look like Father when you frown like that,” Sansa tells him instead.

“ _You_ look like your Lady Mother.”

“She looks like _Lady Stark_ ,” Arya corrects, grinning full-toothed. “ _Our_ Lady. Stop being an idiot, Jon, and get in here and pull up your sleeves.”

Arya lifts a knife over her sister in the dark, and smiles.

Sansa smiles back.

Arya uses knives. Sansa uses needles. Jon watches, and worries over the blood.

When they face the Great Hall in the morning, all six of their arms are bare. Two of the left wrists are scarred blank, the third says _Viserion_ , and on all three right wrists-

Sansa and Arya and Jon Snow have soulmarks, writ well after adulthood in blood-red, fresh-healed scars across three matching wrists, and every one of those soulmarks reads _Stark_.

**Author's Note:**

> I have so many headcanons about this universe, you guys. SO MANY. 
> 
> (Yes, Ned Stark absolutely had Jon Snow's mother's name on his wrist. And no, no one living ever saw it. He went to his grave praying that his daughters would do better protecting their soulmates than he did, with his eyes fixed on Sansa captive and Arya dirty and lost across the square.)


End file.
